QuiltCon: Post Three

These last three days of reviewing QuiltCon have been good for me... thinking about the whole experience, and particularly about the quilt judging. Many of you have commented about it too, reflecting my thoughts: Why does it seem that straight line quilting was rewarded, and others overlooked? What were the judges looking for?

I can speculate all I want, and still won't ever hear the answers. But it's possible that the judges had a strategy. Perhaps they meant to:

1. Reward quilts that adhere to the modern quilt aesthetic, focusing on simple and minimal quilt design elements, and those included simple and minimal quilting patterns. These quilt characteristics are in keeping with the definition of a modern quilt.
2. Encourage new quilters to stretch themselves. A new quilter who has straight-line quilted her own a quilt (rather than send it out to be long arm quilted by someone else) has put herself into her creation. Then, entering that quilt in a show is another way to try something they've not done before.

None of the three judges were certified quilting judges. They were: 1) Carolyn Friedlander, a fabric and pattern designer, and teacher; 2) Janine Vangool, publisher, editor and designer of Uppercase magazine; and 3) Stevie Graves, a quilter since 1975 who is the Road to California quilt show judging coordinator, and president of the International Quilting Association.

It was disappointing to see few quilts with interest quilting. I'm not the only one who noticed. I've read many comments about it on Instagram, and KathleenQuilts posted about it from her longarm quilter perspective.

Suffice it to say, the judging criterion (and judges' comments) for QuiltCon were definitely not those of a typical national quilt show.

And, in other randomness...

In the minimalist design category was this beauty called "Modern Mojo 2" by Linda Thielfoldt, of Troy, Michigan. She's a DAM girl! Ha, ha. A member of the Detroit Area MQG.

Linda did a super quilting job of this one. I couldn't help but admire the detail.

Fabulous, isn't it? No surprise... when I Googled Linda's name, her longarm quilting business came up. A study of that quilting, and I just knew it was longarm quilted. Still, it's similar to the "elaborate" quilting I strive for, though I have never quilted as densely as this.

Another Instagram point of discussion has been about the predominance of quilts using solids. Again, quilts with solids, or mostly solids, received the awards. Makes one wonder how it is that so many print fabrics are being sold, and presumably used in quilts, and those quilts weren't juried into QuiltCon. An exception is our "Ad Libbing" quilt with it's print improv blocks.

On Sunday afternoon, another mostly solids and low volume quilt was awarded $1000 as the People's Choice winner. "Quilt for our Bed" was made by Laura Hartrich. The back of the quilt is as graphic as the front.

Throughout the four days of QuiltCon, ongoing demonstrations were offered at one of two locations in the hall. In this demo by Latifah Saafir (she's one of the two founders of the MQG), she first demonstrated how to piece both small and large curves to make half circles, and then how to sew a complete circle! You know... a circle inside a circle. It was interesting to see how easy she made it look. Good information here, and all of it free!

A few interesting stats that were presented during the Sunday afternoon MQG general meeting:

• membership grew 600 percent from 2013 to 2014 
• 8161 members worldwide as of December 31, 2014 
• 95 percent of all pre-structure MQG chapters have now affiliated with national
• 139 local chapters (Our Central Florida MQG chapter became official in late January, 2015.)
• 2785 individual members
• membership represents 50 states; 32 countries; and 6 continents

On Saturday and Sunday of the show, my Riley Blake Challenge quilt, "Dandelion Clock" was displayed in the MassDrop booth. For bringing my quilt in, and picking it up, MassDrop thanked me with a bundle of a dozen Birch fabric (organic) fat quarters. Nice! 

I couldn't leave Austin without getting barbecue one time. The fam went to dinner at Salt Lick in Driftwood, and after a two hour wait (no kidding!) for a table I got my one pound of pulled pork. I'd like to brag and say I ate it all, but I couldn't manage it. But at least three-fourths disappeared!

Have you ever seen such a thing as this? It's called a Pub Crawler, and is powered by people sitting on bar stools pedaling while they drink! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it - traffic was heavy in downtown Austin too!

And speaking of pedaling... these were just outside the convention center doors. Demand for quick (or not-so-quick) bicycle transportation must be such that someone decided it was worthwhile to offer them for rent. 

Over two days, we drove back home in cool temps and rain most of the way. An overnight in Pensacola was the perfect opportunity for one more meet up with long-time blog friend, Karen of NanaGirlQuilts. She's a domestic machine quilter too, and we've been following each other for several years, thanks to an introduction by Lollyquiltz. Karen and I have FaceTimed on several occasions, consulting about our quilts, but meeting in person over dinner at Cheddar's was the best. We shared quilty talk - happily, she's gradually inching her way toward more modern quiltmaking - and other mutual interests that make for lively conversation. Quilty friends already know I have no problem "keeping it lively!"

So to wrap-up, QuiltCon was a fabulous show that I would recommend to all quilters. I know and appreciate that a lot of people worked hard to make it happen, and that without the dozens of volunteers, it wouldn't have been such a nice show. While parts of it weren't what I expected or hoped for, I'm still grateful that I had the chance to attend and participate.

QuiltCon 2016 is in Pasadena, California; and, QuiltCon 2017 is in Savannah, Georgia. I'm aiming to attend in Savannah. Let's plan to meet-up! Linda

Back at it!

At my follow-up visit for my leg catheterization, I got the all clear to return to normal activities. It was also interesting to learn that in fact my left leg stent was 90 percent blocked! That's an unbelievable build-up of plaque in just six months. I can't tell you how happy I am to be "clean" again!

I finished this quilt, and used one of my new labels on it. I like these, and will sure use them, but I will also make my usual Printed Treasures labels so all the details are recorded too.

I've been anxious to try quilting that double batting. Today I had time to play with my test piece. Not only do I love the way this looks, but it quilted just beautifully! No problem whatsoever moving it through the machine, and in fact, I felt that I had more control over the piece because it was "sturdy." I'm charmed with how this looks, and excited to get started on the big quilt!

I tested four different threads to decide which I want to go crazy with. All I know so far is that white is ruled out. It just doesn't do anything for the designs.

Here's the test quilting from the back. Backing fabric is Carolyn Friedlander's 108" Widescreen, in grey.

A few evenings ago, during a brief stroll outside my sewing room, I came across this. I didn't know Hogan had an interest in ballet!

Linda

Razzmatazz

Every week, all I have to share is little bits of this and that. No significant accomplishments lately, except ones I can't share yet. So here's the razzmatazz from the past week. 

A new quilting foot arrived; an Ebay purchase. It's a Janome 1660 series ruler foot that fits my Pfaff Grand Quilter. The foot has a quarter-inch "heel" (the term for the height or thickness of the foot) that is meant for ruler work - place the ruler against the heel without concern that ruler might slip under the foot. The foot on the right is the regular FMQ foot. I can't wait to give the new one a try!

The same day the sewing machine foot arrived, so did the fabrics MQG is mailing to MQGer's who signed up for the Michael Miller Challenge. By June 23 we're to come up with a quilted item using all or some of the six fabrics on the left, and any solids. Our LQS, Simply Sew Boutique is stocking the collection, so when our Central Florida MQG meeting was held at the shop, I picked up a few more coordinates. I melt over those Moda Bella solids - Bermuda (top right) and aqua. 

During quiet time, usually when I'm away from home, I'm still hand-baste foundation paper pieces for the Flower Ball quilt. I have just a few more papers to baste and then the hand stitching begins. I'll use 60-weight light grey Bottom Line thread for that step.

When I saw Debbie's post with pictures of a very pretty pillow, I knew I'd found my next (of four) pillow for our sofa. The tutorial for "Christmas Snowflake" is on Flickr, and despite the name, I don't think it will look Christmas-sy in these colors. I've cut enough pieces to make two 20" blocks, one for each side of the pillow.

Anticipating seeing grandsons in several weeks, I made another pair of shorts - the fourth pair I've sewn in the past weeks. This Angry Birds fabric came from Fabric.com. I know they'll be a hit with Austin, who will be four years old on May 6. Again, I matched the front pockets to the shorts fronts.

A big task that has taken up much of my time has been designing this quilt top. You wouldn't think it would take very long, but I've been designing with a mind toward teaching newer quilters how to sew on the diagonal - triangles, to be precise. With many ways to making flying geese, half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles, and the like, I attempted to put a dab of each into this 54" X 60" design. Not having design software, I found myself wasting quite a bit of fabric (Zen Chic; Kona; Bella) and having to wait for a reorder. EQ7 for the Mac is supposed to be released in April, and I couldn't be more anxious to use it. This project needs a diagram, yardages calculated, written instructions.... and someone to test it before May 21!

One Way/Any Way, 54" X 60" for Beyond First Time Quiltmaking class

Hmm... I'm noticing a distinct partiality to certain colors in all three of my current and upcoming projects! I see I need to step out of the box one of these days!

As always, I'm doing what I love! Next week sees me flying to Paducah for the AQS show! Excited to go, but dreading the flight. Say a prayer for my flying fear, please. Linda

Quilting and Sewing

I'm away for a couple weeks visiting grandies. When their parents are away on business, I'll have my hands full for a few days. They're adorable children (if I do say so myself), but I'm making a serious adjustment to the realization that a two year-old boy and a three year-old boy can easily become loud, disruptive, demanding and difficult. Those infant angels can and do make changes. I'm also enjoying shopping for myself - snatching up great bargains on summer clothes - and catching up with friends: Carla of Lollyquiltz, and an Iowa friend who's visiting me next week.

Before leaving home, I managed to get a little machine quilting done on my Beach Cabanas Among Friends quilt - I guess I've just named it!

Taking cues from the fabric prints for the quilting designs, I first quilted the water, then the sand.

Each cabana is quilted differently, just like the friends they represent. I've changed thread color to match each cabana, choosing quilting designs that are similar to the prints. Small "snails" are quilted on the pink cabana, and organic lines on the gold cabana. By the way, I'm not using the BSR for this one. I'm pretty sure I won't be using it much, if at all.

Also before leaving I won Jennifer Paganelli's giveaway of fat quarters from her Happy Land collection. Here are those 23 fat quarters! What a great win! I see some yummy sewing ahead.

I'm as pleased as punch about that fabric, but even happier that Jennifer also generously emailed me a PDF of her new SisBoom "Rebecca" shift dress pattern! It's one I've wanted to make!

Though I was a sewist for many years before taking up quilting, I've never made anything using a PDF pattern. It's been an interesting experience. Just as with a commercial pattern, expect to go through prep work to make the pattern just the right size. I'm making the shift for myself, so I took my measurements first, printed 21 pages for the size 8 pattern, and then cut and taped together the pieces.

A quick check of the little 1" X 1" square on the print-out, ensured my printer sized it accurately.

The pattern called for 2-1/2 yards of fabric for the shift, and to make bias strips for the armhole finish. That was about a half-yard too much, so I'll buy less for the next dress.

All the parts are ready to sew, including pressing fusible interfacing to the back of the facing pieces. The pattern doesn't call for interfacing, but in my experience, it gives better stability to necklines and - in this case - a waistline band. 

The fabric I'm using is "Splurge" by Donna Wilder, a Joann's Fabric purchase. I thought it best to try out the pattern on a relatively inexpensive fabric and save the "good stuff" for a second dress. I hope to use my daughter's sewing machine to sew it while I'm here. Linda

Giveaway Winner and Quilting

The really cool thing about hosting the Blog2Print giveaway... ah, besides the fact that the prize is so great... is that I already knew almost everyone who entered! I follow most of your blogs, and I count you as friends. The bad part is, "I wanted everyone to win!" But the good part is, "I'm happy one of my friends won."

She's an Aussie who lives in South Australia. Yay Emma! Emma blogs at Sampaguitaquilts, and if you don't already read her posts, you should. She's a young mum of two, and an extremely talented free-motion quilter. She recently switched to quilting on a Bernina 820 and has shared her views about that. Boy, you should see the stuff she quilts!

I follow the blogs of several free-motion quilters whose information helps me with my own free motion quilting. That's what I've been doing lately: quilting.

After reading my friend Karen's FMQ post showing her favorite go-to quilting design, I adapted it for my Disappearing Four-Patch quilt. (Click the "Nine Quilty Tutorials" tab for my Disappearing Four-Patch Tutorial.)

I began quilting the design by making a large comma, circling in and back out. Then I feathered around the comma. And finally I echoed the feathers once (sometimes twice) before moving on to quilt the next comma.

On the back.

These "feather flowers" show up best on a tone-on-tone portion of the pieced backing.

On the front, the design is so busy that the all over quilting doesn't show up very well. I'm glad I didn't spend more time on it, as I completed it in two days.

I'm hand-sewing down binding now.

Mentioning binding makes me want to comment about some younger quilters who are posting about how quickly they can stipple quilt a quilt, and machine sew binding with invisible thread. Well, I'm all for it if you're in a big hurry because your quilt is needed elsewhere.

For me, in recent years, making quilts has become more about developing skill sets and enjoying the process.

An aside: I can quantify my own quiltmaking efforts by telling you that I recently inventoried all my quilted items - quilts, wallhangings, table runners, and pillows. The number totals 114 items... in my possession. That doesn't count the dozens of pieces I've given away. 

When I spend time free-motion quilting, I'm learning how to manipulate the fabrics, try different designs and methods for marking designs, and work with my sewing machine's temperment. FMQing increases my appreciation for the efforts made by quilters who take time to quilt their best - by machine and by hand. And hand sewn binding? Well that's quite relaxing. I make this observation for myself and from observing quilters who sew quilts as a group effort. It's everyone's favorite part! And who can deny that a hand-sewn binding just looks nice?

I'll leave this topic with my point: Making quilts isn't about who can make the most quilts the fastest. It's the adventure and pleasure in the process.

Hmm, I bet you've heard that before. Well, I needed to hear it again. Linda

P.S. I have entered a pillow into Quilting Gallery's weekly online quilt show. You can vote for five pillows and I'd appreciate one vote for mine: "All About Selvages." Thanks!

Was Ugly. Still Ugly?

In September, quilters who wanted to participate in our DSMMQG (Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild) "One Fourth Ugly" swap brought in a sack with a quarter yard of fabric, or equivalent pieces of a quarter yard of fabric, and took home someone else's fabric. We had two months to make something using that ugly stuff, and can keep what we made. Last night's DSMMQG meeting was our big reveal.

Here's mine.

"Ugly," 31-1/2" X 31-1/2"

The single piece of fabric in my sack was the tone-on-tone dull aqua print. It appears as wedges in each circle, and as binding.

Flipping through my trusty Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, I came across this "Snowball Wreath" and proceeded to figure out how to make it.

Piecing and machine applique were both used to make four 15" finished blocks. 

I quilted with bright yellow 50-weight Aurifil thread.

The quilting designs include lots of channel quilting marked with a Hera marker, and free motion bubbles.

Because the challenge was to use ugly fabric I made that perfectly clear on the quilt back! Since winning a giveaway that included the book "Word Play Quilts," (Thank you, Madame Samm!) I'm having fun finding places to put words. 

indoor photo

Three more of my own ugly prints were used up in this backing too. Yay! This print, that I finally used up, was bought sometime in the mid-80's. I've heard, but can't find any supporting evidence, that it's considered "a classic." It was one of Concord's (?) most popular prints and was available in several colorways. I also have it in lavender.

Though I didn't use to be, I'm now fairly diligent about making sure my quilts get a label.

For this quilt, I probably didn't need a label at all since this really says it. 

Check out more of our uglies on Doris's blog. And even more pictures of uglies and our holiday swap items are on our modern guild website. 

The antithesis of ugly is this - what our front yard looked like a couple days ago. It was quite literally "raining leaves"...  pretty golden-colored ones from a maple tree. 

However, by the end of the day the tree was bereft of leaves, and after several passes with the mulching lawn mower, was a mass of golden compost. Such a pretty end to autumn. Linda

New Life

Yes. This is what you're probably thinking it is. A big piece of wood. To be exact, it's one of two large hollow core doors I acquired about 30 years ago when we had a room remodeled in our first house. I've taken them with me through numerous moves because they've been handy for many purposes. These doors are the reason I didn't do any machine quilting for a couple weeks. That's because they were in the garage where I applied two layers of spray varnish, and then brushed on three layers of high gloss polyurethane.

I was going for a slick surface and I achieved it! Now the doors are laying across sawhorses in my sewing area. They fairly glow! And as I hoped, my quilts slip around easily, almost too easily! More than once a portion has just slid onto the floor. Hmm. Maybe there's something about too much of a good thing? 

But no. I love having this smooth surface for quilting. It was worth the time - mostly waiting for varnish to dry - that I had to park my VW Bug in the driveway instead of the garage. My first quilt on the new surface is this purple and yellow "New Life Quilt." The top was finished in May.

Making a New Life quilt is a great way to use small fabric pieces. All color combinations of the smallest pieces and shapes can be sewn together to make Ezekiel blocks which are then joined with sashing. This particular quilt is different than others I've made because I tried making it with particular colors, and I sewed the top together with the blocks on point. I didn't do anything fancy in the way of quilting. 

I quilted a fan in the blocks; snails in the sashing and cornerstones...

...and a feather swoop in the outside setting triangles.

54" X 65-1/2"

Thanks Mary for letting me use the pretty front entry to your house for my photo shoot.

Even more Ezekiel blocks are on the back of the quilt. I'm happy to say I used up some good, old fabric for this quilt.

I'm handling a rush of activities around here while battling laryngitis. This is the first time I've ever had such a squeaky voice, and while I would generally be in good humor about it (it doesn't hurt a bit), I've been anxious because of my speaking obligations these past two weeks. Stitchin' Mission, with 40 newbies and 11 helpers, started last Thursday which meant I was talking a lot about making quilts. I think that triggered the decline in my voice. 

Tonight I'm giving a Stitchin' Mission program to members of the Ankeny Area Quilters Guild. I'll be gargling salt water before I go! Laryngitis aside, the presenting part will be fun. I enjoy sharing my passion for something I believe in - making quilts for others.

Again Thursday is the second Stitchin' Mission lesson where I'll talk about rotary cutting, chain-piecing, and sewing together a quilt top. I'm sure I'll get through it all just fine... though a few of your prayers are appreciated! Linda